


One Day, Everlasting and Perfect

by Nokomis



Category: Fables (Willingham) - All Media Types, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, crossposting LJ fic from days of yore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 12:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11290866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: In dreams, she walks the ghost-paths of her phantom kingdom.





	One Day, Everlasting and Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://nokomis305.livejournal.com/164062.html).

In dreams, she walks the ghost-paths of her phantom kingdom. She waves to the shades of people she's met before, and feels the rough cobblestone of the street through memory only.

In dreams, she attends feasts, though the only thing she can taste is air. 

She doesn't dare look too closely at the borders of her kingdom. The borders are murky with fog, and things move within it.

One day - though all days here are one day, everlasting and perfect - she goes too close to the border, and a figure steps out of the fog. A stranger.

"Welcome," she greets him.

He doesn't smile. "Normally I say that."

She falters, but does not forget her manners. She motions around. "Have you visited my kingdom before?"

This time a smile does tug at the side of his lips, and she imagines that with a bit of color in his death-pale skin he'd be quite handsome. "It is not unfamiliar to me."

She peers over his shoulder at the foggy landscape. “I’ve never ventured this far,” she tells him, wringing her hands and feeling the needle-sharp prick of pain in her hand.

The crow perched on his shoulder eyes her warily.

Standing here, the stranger and the crow are more real than anything she’s ever seen, and behind her, her phantom kingdom shimmers and shifts and reveals itself to be nothing but cloud and air and dream.

She looks back, panicked, but her castle, her lands, her people are gone like wisps of smoke.

“Now you’ve ventured even farther,” the stranger tells her, not unkindly.

“Bring it back! Please, I need... I need my home,” she pleas. “I will not bother you or your ilk, I just cannot... I will dream until I am dead, if I am not rescued. You know this, Lord of Dreams! Please just allow me my illusion, so I’m not constantly reminded of my helplessness.”

Morpheus looks at her - sees right through every act she’s put on, it feels - and nods, waving his hand and allowing her dreamlands to reappear.

“Thank you,” she tells him, but he has already retreated to elsewhere on the dreamscape.

Roaming endlessly, Sleeping Beauty dreams.


End file.
